Many business owners think that posting a blog is just for fun and you can blah blah about anything you want. Or, many think that a blog is a hard-sell approach to get customers to buy your product or service. Both of these ideas are mistaken.

Sure, a blog can be fun to read, but your first consideration should be what are your customers looking for? Helpful information, education, tips, and more that will build a rapport with them and position your company as leader in your field.

A blog helps to build a relationship with clients and prospects that will result in their ability to trust you. When it comes time for them to buy your product or service they will turn to you because they feel they know and trust you and because you’ve provided them with helpful information in the past—not just a “buy me” approach.

Posting a blog can help to drive traffic to your website. When combined with the power of social media—Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and others—links to your blog get people to click through to read about a topic they are interested in. By clicking to the blog, they are hence visitors to your website and will look around at what you have to offer. Indeed, after posting a blog, we see large spikes in website traffic on the days following the post.

Another reason to post a blog, is that it increases your search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine results pages (SERPs). Search engine results pages are web pages served to users when they search for something online using a search engine, such as Google. The user enters their search query (often using specific terms and phrases known as keywords) upon which the search engine presents them with a SERP.

By using keywords in your blog content, you get a chance to beat out your competitors in page rankings. And when you create a blog in WordPress, for example, you have an additional opportunity to list “tags.” Think of tags as keywords used for topics discussed in a particular post. All of this will help you to get found in a search and will contribute to a higher page ranking.

You can also get more bang for your buck by using your blog content as an email blast to your database on Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, or other email program.

All in all, a blog is a very useful business tool that will increase awareness of your business, create a positive company image, build a trusting relationship with customers and prospects, and boost your website traffic and sales.

We hope you’ve found this blog helpful. It is part of our continuing effort to provide useful information to our clients and interested parties. If you need help with a blog for your company please contact us at (508) 397-7971 or email info@advertising-works.com.

We get results for our clients because of our extensive research of the client company and research of their target audience, an advertising strategy based on this research, and killer creative that speaks to prospects in a language they understand and that delivers a consistent message and call to action.

Advertising That Works would like to help you grow your business. Contact us for a FREE consultation.

I’m sitting down to write this blog because it seems there is an issue with clients and potential clients that keeps coming up. This issue is keeping them from maximizing their advertising dollar, and even more importantly, it is putting forth a poor brand image that may very well portray their company as less than stellar.

That issue is the “I can do it myself” syndrome.

Many small and midsize companies—and yes, even some large corporations—are stuck in the belief that they can do their own advertising, e.g., CEOs or their secretaries who write and design their print ads, develop their own direct mail packages, write their own blogs, and write and post their own social media. I hear them say, “Oh, we tried that and it didn’t work.”

What these CEOs don’t understand is that training, education,
and experience in the field of advertising and marketing
is not just “nice,” it is crucial.

Just as these CEOs might be highly qualified in their field, advertising professionals are highly qualified in theirs. And the reason their advertising didn’t work is because it was an uneducated, amateur (at best) approach. Whether these CEOs choose my advertising agency or another qualified agency, I cannot stress enough the resulting positive company image and return on investment of their advertising dollar when they do—as opposed to wasting money on advertising that is doomed to fail.

Yes, these CEOs are highly intelligent and might even be able to write a decent business letter. But marketing and advertising strategy, copy writing, and design are skills that one does not learn overnight. There are research, specific skills, and even psychology involved. Their materials have to speak to their target audience in a language to which that audience will respond.

What I’m talking about is STRATEGY.

From a marketing perspective, your target market must be understood. Who are your best clients and best potential clients? What will be your strategy— provide current services offered to new clients or new services offered to current clients, provide a wide range of services to a variety of client types or narrow range to a specific type, to name a few? These decisions involve consideration of risk/growth/cost from low to high in all three categories. You need to know what you are doing to make the right decision.

Knowledge of your competition is also key. You may think your product or service is the best ever, but there may very well be a competitor who is ahead of the game. You need to know the details to be able to compete.

You need to know your current and potential clients’ buying considerations in order of priority in order to address them—things like cost, availability, experience, expertise, and reputation.

You need to set specific goals within a specified timeline, such as:

“I now have XX clients bringing in $XX gross income in 6 months time; I am going to achieve the goal of bringing in XX new clients who will generate $XX gross income in the next 6 months, an increase of XX% and monthly billings of $XX.”

And the marketing tactics! This is not a one size fits all game. A mix of tactics that might work for one company may not work for another. There are print ads, direct mail, social media, telemarketing, email marketing, and other means to consider. A professional in this field will choose tactics most likely to work for your specific business. Why throw your money away on something that is doomed to fail?

And importantly, results must be monitored in order for your advertising to keep on working.

It’s time to reconsider.

I hope this blog has made some CEOs reconsider and resist the urge to “do it themselves.” Sure, advertising professionals charge for their services. But this cost is miniscule when it comes to saving you megabucks on your advertising.

Magazine and newspaper ads cost money and if they don’t work it’s money out the window. The same goes for direct mail—printing and postage cost money and if you don’t get a return it’s money down the tubes. A poorly designed website with poorly written content puts forth the worst image possible—and that high school age techie who put it together may have been paid big bucks.

And one of the biggest mistakes—that social media is all that’s needed—well, that’s simply not true. Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and other social media do work but they usually cannot attain your advertising goals without the assistance of additional media. Not to mention how harmful it could be were an amateur to inadvertently post something that’s really stupid or offensive to a certain group—you can never take it back!

On a positive note, usually a happy medium will occur where you can find an advertising professional to work within your advertising budget. When you do you’ll be ensuring your good company image and your advertising will actually attain the goals you’ve set. In other words, ROI.

We get results for our clients because of our extensive research of the client company and research of their target audience, an advertising strategy based on this research, and killer creative that speaks to prospects in a language they understand and that delivers a consistent message and call to action.

Advertising That Works would like to help you grow your business. Contact us for a FREE consultation: info@advertising-works.com or 978.397.7971.

There is no doubt among advertising professionals that advertising helps to grow your business. It reinforces your brand, brings in new customers/clients, keeps you ahead of your competition, and creates a customer base that ensures your viability should times get hard.

But the advertising budget is where CEOs sometimes get hung up. An advertising budget is far different for a small business than it is for a huge conglomerate. The bottom line is to figure how much that budget should be and plan for it.

The U.S. Small Business Administration recommends spending 7 to 8 percent of your gross revenue for marketing and advertising if you’re doing less than $5 million a year in sales and your net profit margin — after all expenses — is in the 10 percent to 12 percent range.

In 2010 the Chief Marketing Officers, or CMO, Council conducted a survey of its 6,000 chief marketing officer members to assess marketing and advertising spending across a wide range of industries. The survey results revealed that 58 percent of chief marketing officers spent less than 4 percent of gross revenue on marketing, 16 percent spent between 5 and 6 percent, 23 percent spent more than 6 percent, while 2 percent spent more than 20 percent. This survey seems to suggest that if you set your spending level between 0 percent and 6 percent of gross revenue, you will be in good company that includes 74 percent of the CMO Council membership.

Okay, even if you’re at the low end of advertising spending, say 4%, a lot of
advertising can be done with an end result of increasing your sales.

For 1 million in sales, that’s $40,000. But for a small business start-up making a mere $100,000, it’s $4,000—an investment that would surely pay off in getting that business branded.

The larger business would be able to do more expensive advertising that would certainly be beneficial, such as magazines, newspapers, pay-per-click advertising with Google, list buying, and large direct mail campaigns—along with less expensive advertising like email blasts, social media, blogs, and public relations.

But small and midsize businesses can do things like having their website professionally written and designed and optimized with appropriate keywords to get them found in a Google search; email blasts, social media, blogs, public relations, and smaller, direct mail campaigns (possibly a postcard mailing to area residents), all of which are quite inexpensive.

Advertising should be ongoing with a consistent message
going out to your target audience.

Important things to remember when developing a strategy are to target the audience you want to reach with a language and a look they can relate to AND keep the advertising effort ongoing—slam bam seldom works to any great advantage.

We get results for our clients because of our extensive research of the client company and research of their target audience, an advertising strategy based on this research, and killer creative that speaks to prospects in a language they understand and that delivers a consistent message and call to action.

Advertising That Works would like to help you grow your business. Contact us for a FREE consultation: info@advertising-works.com or 978.397.7971.